Ernest Thayer
| birth_place = Lawrence, Massachusetts, U.S. | death_date = August | death_place = Santa Barbara, California, U.S. | occupation = Columnist | nationality = American | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | spouse = Rosalind Buel Hammett | partner = | children = | relatives = | influences = | influenced = | signature = | website = }} Ernest Lawrence Thayer (August 14, 1863 - August 21, 1940) was an American poet, best known as the author of "Casey at the Bat". Life Thayer was born in Lawrence, and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated magna cum laude in philosophy from Harvard in 1885, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The Lampoon's business manager, William Randolph Hearst, hired Thayer as humor columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, 1886-88. Thayer’s last piece, dated June 3, 1888, was a ballad entitled "Casey" ("Casey at the Bat"). The 1st public performance of the poem was on August 14, 1888, by actor De Wolf Hopper, on Thayer's 25th birthday. It took several months after its publication for the poem to make Thayer famous, since he was hardly the boastful type and had signed the June 3 poem with the nickname "Phin". Thayer's recitation of it at a Harvard class reunion in 1895 may seem trivial except that it helps solve the mystery, which lingered into the 20th century, of who had written it. In the mid-1890s, Thayer contributed several other comic poems for Hearst's New York Journal and then turned to overseeing his family's mills in Worcester full-time. Thayer moved in 1912 to Santa Barbara, where he married Rosalind Buel Hammett and retired. He died in 1940, at age 77. The New York Times' obituary of Thayer on August 22, 1940, p.19, quotes comedian DeWolf Hopper, who helped make the poem famous: :"Thayer indubitably wrote 'Casey,' but he could not recite it.... I have heard many other give 'Casey.' Fond mamas have brought their sons to me to hear their childish voices lisp the poem, but Thayer's was the worst of all. In a sweet, dulcet Harvard whisper he implored 'Casey' to murder the umpire, and gave this cry of mass animal rage all the emphasis of a caterpillar wearing rubbers crawling on a velvet carpet. He was rotten." Writing 2 mysteries remain about the poem: whether anyone or anyplace was the real-life Casey and Mudville, and, if so, their actual identities. On March 31, 2004, Katie Zezima of The New York Times penned an article called "In 'Casey' Rhubarb, 2 Cities Cry 'Foul!'" on the competing claims of 2 towns to such renown: Stockton, California, and Holliston, Massachusetts. On the possible model for Casey, Thayer dismissed the notion that any single living baseball player was an influence. However, late 1880s Boston star Mike "King" Kelly (died 1894) is odds-on the most likely model for Casey's baseball situations. Besides being a native of a town close to Boston, Thayer, as a San Francisco Examiner baseball reporter in the offseason of 1887-88, covered exhibition games featuring Kelly. In November 1887, some of his reportage about a Kelly at-bat has the same ring as Casey's famous at-bat in the poem. A 2004 book by Howard W. Rosenberg, Cap Anson 2: The Theatrical and Kingly Mike Kelly: U.S. Team Sport's First Media Sensation and Baseball's Original Casey at the Bat, reprints a 1905 Thayer letter to a Baltimore scribe who was asking about the poem's roots. In the letter, Thayer singled out Kelly as having shown "impudence" in claiming to have written it. Rosenberg argues that if Thayer still felt offended, Thayer may have steered later comments away from connecting Kelly to it. Kelly had also performed in vaudeville, and recited the poem dozens of times, possibly, to Thayer's dismay, butchering it. Publications *''Casey at the Bat'' (by "Phineas Thayer"; illustrated by Dan Sayre Groesbeck). Chicago: A.C. MCClurg, 1912.Casey at the Bat (1912), Internet Archive. Web, Dec. 1, 2013. *''The First Book Edition of "Casey at the Bat"'' (illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher). New York: Franklin Watts, 1964. *''The Annotated 'Casey at the Bat': A collection of ballads about the mighty Casey'' (edited by Martin Gardner). New York: C.N. Potter, 1967. *''Ernest L. Thayer's Casey at the Bat: A ballad of the Republic sung in the year 1888'' (illustrated by Christopher Bing). Broooklyn, NY: handprint books, 2000. *''Casey at the Bat: A ballad of the Republic sung in the year 1888'' (illustrated by C.F. Payne). New York: Simon & Schuster (Books for Young Readers), 2003. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Ernest Thayer, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 1, 2013. See also * List of U.S. poets References Notes External links ;Poems *"Casey at the Bat" *Thayer, Ernest Lawrence (1863-1940) at Representative Poetry Online. *Ernest Lawrence Thayer 1863-1940 at the Poetry Foundation *Ernest L. Thayer at Amazon.com ;About *Ernest Thayer at NNDB. *Thayer, Ernest Lawrence, at American National Biography Online *Ernest Lawrence Thayer at Internet Movie Database * Category:1863 births Category:1940 deaths Category:American poets Category:Harvard Lampoon people Category:People from Lawrence, Massachusetts Category:People from Worcester, Massachusetts Category:People from Santa Barbara, California Category:19th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets